Some ‘theologians’ claim that you drive, especially young people, away from Christ when you teach them about Noah’s flood. According to them, the world-wide flood is just a myth. Why was it a real event?
# What is the story behind the flood?
In the Garden of Eden, the serpent (the devil or Satan)1 convinced Eve to disobey God and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then God prophesied to Satan in Genesis 3:15, ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
# Satan made a plan to escape his sentence.
He would send his angels (demons) to cohabit with women so that the offspring would be of ‘mixed’ blood: human and demonic. Genesis 6:4 tells us, ‘..the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.’ It was a massive demonic infiltration.
# The result of the mixed marriages left God with no other alternative but to judge.
- In Jude 6 we read God’s judgement on the demonic beings, ‘And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home – these He has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.’ In God’s Kingdom, each created entity has been assigned a specific place to live. So those demons were punished because they did what is unlawful, they married humans.
- In Genesis 7-9 we read God’s judgement on the defiled and corrupted ‘mixed’ race of people – the world-wide flood in Noah’s time.
- God could not allow His Son, Jesus the Redeemer, to be born out of mixed blood. Jesus would save only the human race.
- There is no salvation for Satan and his angels. The reason is that they were initially all part of God’s holy angelic creation that served Him. When Satan and a third of the angels rebelled, they did it consciously. They knew God, saw and served Him. That fact excludes them from another chance of being saved by Jesus.
- Only Noah and his family of ‘pure’ blood were saved out of the flood.
# God’s mercy in the face of judgement.
- There is another lesson in the flood episode. God is invisible to people. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, God walked with them in the cool of the evening. They saw Him daily. When they had to leave the Garden (God’s visible presence) so that they could not eat of the Tree of Life, God became invisible to people on earth.
- Satan who saw God, messed up his life. God in His mercy gives people many chances because we have a disadvantage in comparison to Satan. We ought to be very grateful for God’s special mercy and grace.
Conclusion
The flood teaches two things:
- Judgment is a fact of life.
- God’s mercy is an even greater fact.
Reference
1. Revelation 12:9
